The present invention relates to a board-to-board electrical connector, and particularly to a board-to-board connector having contacts which can be accurately located in position in a housing of the connector.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,842,875 and 5,879,169, and Taiwan patent application Nos. 81107106 and 83208692 disclose prior art board-to-board or card-to-board electrical connectors. A typical board-to-board electrical connector comprises an insulative housing defining a plurality of channels in opposite sides thereof and a corresponding number of conductive contacts received in the respective channels. Each contact has soldering portions and contacting portions for connecting one printed circuit board to another. In assembly, however, each contact is inserted into a respective channel from a side or bottom of the housing, which exposes the soldering portions of the contacts to being easily damaged, said damage adversely affecting conductive contact between the two printed circuit boards. Furthermore, there is no means in the prior art connector which can ensure the coplanarity of the solder tails of the contacts, therefore, the connector can not be reliably soldered to a printed circuit board by Surface Mounting Technology (SMT). Hence, an improved board-to-board electrical connector is required to overcome the disadvantages of the prior art.